Latin horridus also produced the words horride in Continental French (see DMF horride) and, from the late sixteenth century onwards, horrid in English (see OED horrid a. 88563). Such a word is not attested in Anglo-Norman.

The locution ord de sei (spelled in the edition as orddesey), remains problematic, and the current definition is based on the edition’s translation (with sei interpreted, presumably, as the reflexive pronoun sei²). Alternatively, the phrase may be ord de fey (with confusion of ‘f’ and long ‘s’), which could be translated as ‘disloyal’ or ‘faithless’ (cf. fei¹).

The single substantival use is not entirely unambiguous: the word is put together with homicide, which can mean either ‘murder’ (homicide²) or ‘murderer’ (homicide¹). So the word ord can be translated as either ‘(moral) foulness, vileness’ or ‘a (morally) vile, base despicable person’, both interpretations being grammatically possible. Since the text otherwise lists people and creatures, it was decided to adopt the latter interpretation.